Snowboarder, double big air and one time slopestyle world champion Roope Tonteri is a full-blooded forester. Last year the man purchased a Valtra tractor for his forestry works and in the beginning of this year he contacted Kesla for purchasing of a trailer/loader set. The new set of trailer and loader was forwarded to him in cooperation with AGCO Finland in the beginning of April.
After having done professionally sports, Tonteri aims to continue his career in forestry
Forest has became a appealing element for Tonteri. He has played in woods during his childhood and grown adult right next to it. At the moment big part of his time goes to practising and competitions but during his freetime he is more than happy to do forestry work. He has bought lately around 20 ha of small patches, mainly young growing forest, near his hometown Kouvola.
- Forest has always been the thing for me. When I heard about the forestry education returning to my home town, I decided to apply for the forestry education at Kouvola Vocational Institute, tells Tonteri and continues – With the forestry degree I gain wide knowledge in forestry and I get a possibility to continue with forestry career after the career in sports.
During the active training and competition season Tonteri has not had too much time to sit on the school bench. Digital learning tools have enabled the learning also when traveling and during the spare time his own forest and machinery offer him a great possibility for training in practice.
- During the past few years I have bought some forestry machines. I started with smaller machines and tools, like chain saw and brush cutter. Later on I purchased a Valtra A94-tractor and some tools for it. Now finally I have also got a tractor forest trailer and loader.
KESLA was a natural choice for Tonteri
For his loader and trailer Tonteri choose KESLA. The choice was natural as KESLA is a Finnish producer and partly familiar to Tonteri also previously as he had last summer a chance to use an old PATU loader resulting with 85 cubic meters of firewood.
The trailer chosen by Tonteri is totally a new model, KESLA 124H, and it comes with 10 tons net carrying capacity. The trailer is equipped with brakes and lights, which allows its use also on road (Finnish law). The trailer does not have drive system but the strurdy planned H-model can be equipped with roller drive also afterwards. The trailer has also some new, interesting details, such as tool box, grapple rack and working light in the rear of trailer frame.
Tonteri’s KESLA 314-loader is mounted on the trailer’s drawbar. The loader model is fully new. It folds nicely into the loadspace and offers with its one single extension amazing 7,1 m of outreach. With its 59 kNm of lifting torque it lifts almost 1600 kg from 3 meters outreach. The 1400 kg radiocontrolled winch that is mounted on the loader boom gives more possibilities for wood handling even from distance.
When the set was forwarded to Tonteri, Kesla’s Sales Manager Jyrki Sahinjoki explained carefully the features of the combination and introduced to him the KESLA proC control system, that Tonteri is interested to know more of.
- The control system is interesting. It offers so many different adjustment possibilities for different types of tasks. E.g. lowering the general speed of the loader will be needed when working with the loader for the first times, states Tonteri smiling. – I find the minijoysticks integrated in armrests very handy.
The competition season for Tonteri is almost finished for now and he has soon a possibility to enjoy the forestry works. The amount of hours that will be spend with the KESLA package will depend on his eagerness to use the chainsaw this summer.
- First we will start with cutting birch at Valkeala patch. There are couple of birches difficultly situated between two electric lines. Only one falling direction is possible. There we will put the winch in test, states Tonteri.
Also some thinning needs to be done in his Luumäki patch, so we expect Tonteri to become familiar with his KESLA combination during the summer.
Respect for Finnish forestry lies high in Tonteri’s mind
Tonteri respects highly forests and Finnish forestry.
- In Finland there are no final cuttings in practice. The forest is getting thinned so that the wood grows better, binds CO2 and the thinned wood material can be used elsewhere. The Finnish final cutting is in practice renewal cutting, where the existing wood material is used and new trees are planted to bind CO2.
Tonteri’s next big challenge in snowboarding is the Olympics in Beijing 2022.
- There are young people joining the sport all the time. I have to pay attention and consider when to give more space for them, he says. – After the active sports career I would not mind continuing with the snowboarding in some way, maybe with filming of spectacular stunts.
The tractor, loader and trailer of Tonteri are according to his wish all of the same red colour.
Roope Tonteri Tonteri has altogether three snowboarding world championships: two from big air and one from slopestyle. Tonteri is part of national Finnish snowboarding A-team. He has been chosen by the Finnish journalists as the “Snowboarder of the year” in 2013 and 2015. His next big goal is 2022 olympics in Beijing.
